Archaeology and Desertification in the Wadi Faynan: the Fourth (1999) Season of the Wadi Faynan Landscape Survey

Barker, Graeme; Adams, Russell B.; Creighton, Oliver; Daly, Patrick; Gilbertson, D. D.; Grattan, John; Hunt, Chris; Mattingly, David; McLaren, Sue; Newson, P.; Palmer, Carol; Pyatt, FB; Reynolds, Thomas; Smith, Helen; Tomber, Roberta; Truscott, A.J.

doi:10.1179/lev.2000.32.1.27

Cited by 37 publications

(32 citation statements)

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“…There is ample archaeological evidence to suggest, for example, that humans have degraded regional environments during many eras and in many places in ways that greatly exacerbated natural climatic cycles so that complex social organization became impossible (Cook et al 2012 ;Turner 1974 ). Archaeological evidence suggests that both desertifi cation and increased mortality rates in Wadi Faynen were associated with deforestation and mining during the Roman and Byzantine eras (Barker et al 2007 ), which carries with it important implications for similarly arid regions in the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere. Cook et al ( 2012 ) have developed climate models using information derived from archaeological investigations that suggest precipitation decreases in the order of 5-15 % in southern Mexico and the Yucatan during the Mayan Late Classic and PostClassic Periods because of deforestation.…”

Section: Archaeology As a Global Public Goodmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site and Transnational Heritage

Hingley

2014

Identity and Heritage

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Archaeology is an academic discipline; the things, services, experiences, and information intentionally produced or created as by-products of archaeology are, in economic terms, goods, and these goods are traded in the marketplace. Understanding this is essential to successfully dealing market forces that threaten the academic objectives of archaeology, which can only be achieved by examination of archaeological materials in an uncontaminated state and original context.In economic terms, an archaeological good can range from a body of knowledge of the sort that the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz calls a global public good, to those that he terms local goods, which would include artifacts, services, or experiences ( Stiglitz 1999:310). The latter can be produced and consumed in ways that threaten the former. I argue that that the demand for archaeological and more generally "cultural" goods is driven in large part by the ubiquitous human need to establish an identity, that is, to establish a position in the "cognitive chart" that allows humans to navigate through society (see, for example, Spradley 1979 ).It would follow that anthropology has much to contribute to economic models. A word of clarifi cation is essential here: I will address below formalist models, as opposed to a substantivist arguments, both of these terms coined by Karl Polanyi ( 1957 ), and the latter bolstered by the work of ethnographers half a century ago (Bohannon 1965 ). The school of thought established by these scholars has become known as economic anthropology. In what follows, however, I will assume, as mainstream, formalist economists do, that supply and demand are the basic determinants of market structure, and that, therefore, to better understand and direct market structure, it is necessary to identify as precisely as possible the forces that alter supply and demand. One might say that the approach taken here is an anthropological economics as opposed to traditional economic anthropology. Much more could be said about the value of conducting economic analysis informed by anthropology,

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Section: Archaeology As a Global Public Goodmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site and Transnational Heritage

Hingley

2014

Identity and Heritage

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“…A useful case study for exploring the relationship between Neolithic settlement and water supply is Wadi Faynan, located in southern Jordan. This has been subject to considerable archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research and hydrological modelling (Barker et al 2007;Finlayson & Mithen 2007;Wade et al in press). The PPNA site of WF16 is located at the base of the escarpment to the Jordanian plateau at the juncture between Wadi Ghuwayr and Faynan (Finlayson & Mithen 2007; figure 4).…”

Section: (B) Water Supply and The Neolithic Transitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Smith and co-workers suspect that this transition in the hydrodynamics of the Wadi did not occur until the Bronze Age and even the classical periods when massive vegetation removal occurred to feed the fires used for copper smelting in the Wadi (Barker et al 2007). I suspect that it may have begun earlier in the Neolithic, caused by the foraging of goats and the collection of wood for building and fuel.…”

Section: (D) Water Stress and Collapse Of The Ppnb Villagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As we move into the Bronze Age after 5500 years ago, the archaeological evidence for water management becomes more substantial. Returning to Wadi Faynan once again, we find the steps towards constructing an extensive series of walls within the wadi bottom to collect run-off for crop irrigation, a system that becomes elaborated to sustain the Roman and Byzantine settlement (Barker et al 2007). Bronze Age settlements are known to have rock-cut shafts and tunnels for water, reservoirs both within and outside their town walls and then from the Middle Bronze Age rock-cut cisterns (Ben-Tor 1992; Mabry et al 1996;Philip 2008).…”

Section: (F ) Water Management In Later Prehistory Of the Jordan Valleymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The domestication of water: water management in the ancient world and its prehistoric origins in the Jordan Valley

Mithen

2010

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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The ancient civilizations were dependent upon sophisticated systems of water management. The hydraulic engineering works found in ancient Angkor (ninth to thirteenth century AD), the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan (thirteenth to fifteenth century AD), Byzantine Constantinople (fourth to sixth century AD) and Nabatean Petra (sixth century BC to AD 106) are particularly striking because each of these is in localities of the world that are once again facing a water crisis. Without water management, such ancient cities would never have emerged, nor would the urban communities and towns from which they developed. Indeed, the 'domestication' of water marked a key turning point in the cultural trajectory of each region of the world where state societies developed. This is illustrated by examining the prehistory of water management in the Jordan Valley, identifying the later Neolithic (approx. 8300-6500 years ago) as a key period when significant investment in water management occurred, laying the foundation for the development of the first urban communities of the Early Bronze Age.

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“…The literature on the geoarchaeological and paleoclimatological context of ancient agriculture and metallurgy in Faynan is extensive (cf. Barker et al, 2007;Ben-Yosef et al, 2010;Hauptmann, 2007;Hunt and El-Rishi, 2010;Hunt et al, 2007;Levy et al, 2014a;Mithen and Black, 2011), and further review is beyond the scope of this paper.…”

Section: Description Of the Research Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental impacts of ancient copper mining and metallurgy: Multi-proxy investigation of human-landscape dynamics in the Faynan valley, southern Jordan

Knabb

Erel

Tirosh

et al. 2016

Journal of Archaeological Science

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a b s t r a c tThe environmental impact of mining and metallurgy is an issue that has affected societies in the ancient Near East over the past 8000 years. We present the results of a multidisciplinary project using agricultural sediments from ancient terraces as a cultural archive of environmental pollution and land use in the copper ore-rich Faynan valley of southern Jordan. Due to the simultaneous production of agricultural goods and copper metallurgy throughout the last 6000 years in the valley, environmental pollution and its consequences for human health have been considered as a factor in settlement abatement. Sediments from two farming terrace systems adjacent to the major mining and smelting locales were analyzed. The sediment analyses included metal concentrations, lead-isotopes and phytolith analysis, and OSL dating. Although measurable concentrations of lead and other heavy metals persist in ancient metallurgical waste piles, our investigations found minimal evidence for contamination in the adjacent terrace systems. Based on these results, we argue that the occurrence of environmental pollution in the Faynan valley is highly variable, and that the distribution of heavy metals resulted from a combination of natural and cultural factors, including persistent landscape features that helped contain the most polluted metallurgical deposits. These findings are significant for understanding the processes of landscape change and human impacts on desert environments, including the ways in which past human actions have negatively affected the environment, as well as preserved and protected the environment from further degradation.

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Archaeology and Desertification in the Wadi Faynan: the Fourth (1999) Season of the Wadi Faynan Landscape Survey

Cited by 37 publications

References 8 publications

The Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site and Transnational Heritage

The Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site and Transnational Heritage

The domestication of water: water management in the ancient world and its prehistoric origins in the Jordan Valley

Environmental impacts of ancient copper mining and metallurgy: Multi-proxy investigation of human-landscape dynamics in the Faynan valley, southern Jordan

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